(Web Desk): Justice Ijazul Ahsan of Supreme Court (SC) resigned from his position on Thursday.
According to sources, Justice Ahsan sent his resignation to President Arif Alvi.
He was slated to become the next chief justice of Pakistan following incumbent CJP Qazi Faez Isa’s retirement in October this year.
The development comes a day after of Justice (retd) Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi’s resignation, which has also been accepted by President Arif Alvi.
Mazahar Naqvi was facing a Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) inquiry over allegations of misconduct, a show-cause notice for which was issued in October 2023.
On Tuesday, the top court had rejected his request to stay the proceedings.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan part of the five-member SJC, had refused to join other members of the council on Nov 22, 2023, in the issuance of a fresh show-cause notice to Justice Naqvi.
In his letter to the SJC members on Tuesday, Justice Ahsan regretted the hasty proceedings and that debate and discussion were non-existent and were not permitted during the ongoing council proceedings.
“Thus Nov 22, 2023 proceedings when the second show-cause notice was issued against Justice Naqvi were completely devoid of any discussion or deliberation whatsoever,” he wrote.
Justice Ahsan further said that this manner of proceedings has cast an unwelcome doubt over the whole process, therefore he disagreed with the process followed and the manner in which the proceedings were being conducted, Justice Ahsan explained.
While referring to the allegations in the complaint against the judge, Ahsan regretted that these were utterly without merit or substance, both in law and even on a prima facie appraisal of the facts.
In the letter, he added that that a reasoned and deliberative approach ought to have been adopted which would have prevented the council from falling into the error that was committed with the issuance of the show-cause notice.
Justice Ahsan was also the part of the five-member bench that delivered the verdict in the high-profile Panamagate case in 2017, which led to the disqualification of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo and the then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
He was also appointed as the monitoring judge to supervise and monitor the implementation of the Panamagate case verdict.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan began his legal career in the 1980s. He was confirmed as a judge of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on May 11, 2009, and became the LHC’s CJ on November 6, 2015.
He was elevated to the Supreme Court on June 28, 2016, less than a year after serving as the LHC’s CJ.
Following Ahsan’s resignation, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah will be the next-in-line SC judge to become the chief justice of Pakistan in October this year.